Bach: Well-Tempered Clavier Books I & II

An inspiration for composers from Mozart and Beethoven to Chopin and Brahms, The Well-Tempered Clavier has long been considered a sine qua non of the keyboard literature. In this disc's liner notes, Paul Griffiths points up its suitability for the modern grand piano: "Bach's inquiry into so many nuances, of touch, of interplay between hands and between contrapuntal lines, of character and of expressivity, has helped form keyboard technique as we know it, and his music belongs to the instrument of Beethoven, of Chopin, of Debussy…. Noteworthy is [Schiff's] floated melody and his rhythmic sense—his realization that so much of Bach's music is song or dance. Grandeur and intimacy are also here. Wit, too."

"The clean, limpid textures of these performances are one of their most striking characteristics. Another is the sense of rightness about almost every tempo … nothing seems hurried or laboured, so that the tone of each prelude seems perfectly judged and fugues unfold naturally, with every voice given its own distinctive colouring and the space it needs."—The Guardian